The GeForce 320M GPU isn’t fast, but it’s fast enough to run things like Half Life 2 at playable frame rates. The 2010 Mac mini is basically a 13-inch MacBook Pro in a different form factor. Steam is now alive and well on OS X and last month’s Starcraft 2 release ships with both OS X and Windows versions on the same disc. With a growing installed user base and a higher guaranteed minimum GPU level, the Mac platform is becoming more attractive to game developers. The first Fusion parts might be a logical starting point. If I were a betting man I’d say that Apple is gearing up to eventually support AMD CPUs as well as Intel. Even on Apple’s website, the Intel shoutouts are limited. There’s not a single mention of Intel being inside the Mac mini. ILife, NVIDIA graphics and WiFi are the only things mentioned on the packaging. In fact, one look at the mini’s box reveals Apple’s thinking: The Mac mini continues the trend as Apple sticks to last year’s Penryn based Core 2 Duo P8600 instead of moving to a Core i3. The 2010 13-inch MacBook Pro was our first example, where Apple opted against moving to a Core i3/i5 in order to ship with a NVIDIA GPU. But today, Apple definitely values putting more money towards GPUs than CPUs.

The Larrabee announcement and subsequent increase in integrated graphics investment tells us that Intel is finally trying to win this business back. I was surprised that it took Intel until this year to really heed the call. For the second largest consumer of semiconductors in the world to publicly tell Intel that its graphics wasn’t enough had to be a wake-up call.

Two years ago Apple (and NVIDIA) sent a clear message to Intel - its integrated graphics was no longer good enough.

Asus mx27aq mac mini mid 2010